Day 12- Devil's Tower and Big Horn National Forest

Driving towards Devil's Tower

Today was a long day full of unexpected bonuses and one disappointment.  We left the campground by 9 this morning and headed towards Deadwood, SD which we had been told was a must see.  Unfortunately, Deadwood was pretty dead! I'm sure it was quiet due to the holiday. So we kept driving west towards Cody, WY. About two hours into our trip we took a detour to go see Devil's Tower National Monument.  Len was so excited to see this because of the movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind.  It is just so amazing that this huge chunk of volcanic rock juts up in the middle of nowhere! We could see it for miles before we arrived at the entrance.  Besides Len really wanting to see it, Dunc and Doug were excited to earn another Junior Ranger Badge.  Because we had a five hour drive ahead of us, we only did the visitor's center and took a few pictures. If you look very closely in the picture you can see one or two of the people climbing it that day.  Although we planned a "quick trip" to the monument, we spent two hours there!

Devil's Tower National Monument

Once we were back in the car, we plugged in our next address to the GPS and headed out.  We knew we were cutting it close by spending so much time at Devil's Tower so I called ahead to have rodeo tickets set aside for us.  Here is where the disappointment comes in....because today was a holiday they started the rodeo at 5 pm instead of 8 pm AND they forgot to update the website so we would know that! There was just no way we were going to make a five hour drive fit into 3 in order to get there on time. We figured we could make up a little time. After all, the speed limit out here is 75 which we all know really means 80-85. Little did we know we were going to summit an 8000 footer today ( in the car of course!) We drove through Big Horn National Forest on our way to Cody.  The scenery was absolutely stunning and the driving was absolutely slow, and winding, and treacherous. By the time we made it down the other side of the mountain you could smell every one's brakes.    The pictures do not do the real sights any justice.  We may have missed the rodeo but we saw an unexpected area that was such a bonus!

Big Horn National Forest

Forest fires continue to be a problem out here.  Last night the wind was pretty strong and we could really smell the smoke.  We even passed through some towns that had cancelled the fireworks due to the fire danger they posed.  There were digital billboards along the highway warning smokers that there was a ban on outdoor smoking and NO cigarette butts were to be thrown from cars. We passed many an acre that was regenerating after having been burned.  The charred trees were in the millions or probably trillions.
Finally we pulled into Cody at around 7:30.  The hotel is perfectly situated.  We asked for suggestions for dinner and were told that Irma's grill & saloon was the place to go.  We have always had good luck asking the local where to go so we took his advice!  He failed to mention that Irma;s was in fact the original Buffalo Bill saloon!  All of the waitstaff were in the old saloon get up of black leather vests, white shirts, jeans with a big shiny buckle, cowboy boots and cowboy hat! The inside of the saloon had been restored.  Evidently at 6pm every night there is a "shoot out" right in the restaurant.  We missed that but I believe the actors for the show were still in the restaurant when we arrived.  Either that or or there were a lot of gun toting, beer chugging, scary looking cowboys there! Immediately upon being seated Douglas stated he was no eating there and we needed to leave.  He said he wasn't comfortable and he needed to get out.  After a bit of questioning he finally told us how scary the cowboys were and that he didn't like their hats or their guns! He also was not happy about "being surrounded by dead animals." He was not impressed by all of the taxidermy!  Duncan, on the other hand, was in heaven.  He loved looking at all of the locals (and actors) in their garb. Not to mention that he and Len both got the all you can eat prime rib buffet.  As the name implies, this is a meat eaters paradise!  Duncan came back to the table with a plate of baby back ribs, prime rib, mashed potato, a pickle, and a huge smile on his face!  After dinner we headed out to the local "hotspot" to watch the fireworks.  It was down near the riverbed.  There was a very heavy presence of fire rangers keeping a close eye on all of the debris from the fireworks.

Big Horn from one of the scenic overviews

We've been told that Cody is the last real town of any size before entering Yellowstone.  So tomorrow we will do more laundry (sheets, towels and blankets this time) and get groceries.  We have all of our electronics charging.  Our sites do not have electricity or water so the next four days will be our "roughest" as far as camping goes. Since Cody has so much to offer we'll probably spend most of the morning here then we'll head into Yellowstone's East Entrance. I probably won't be able to update the blog for a bit due to no wi-fi. I'll take good notes and update after!